We haunt every medium we make.

May 30, 2004

A British teenager created a series of computer-mediated stories and personae in order to convince another teenager to muder him. Promised cash, a meeting with Tony Blair, and a career in British intelligence, the older boy stabbed the instigator dangerously, but not fatally. The story spun by the would-be murderee included several MI5 agents, stalkers, surveillance schemes, dying friends, and cybersex.

Little US coverage so far. Perhaps it doesn't hit the right memes - kids too old for the American emphasis on pedophilia in internet panic stories?

Note as well the quiet acceptance of surveillance in public spaces. Each story turns on the mystery of where the stabbing takes place, just out of the reach of cameras. Readers are placed in the surveillant position, scopophilically wanting to learn what happened in the hidden (private) space.

From the Telegraph, a sample of some of the discursive and multitasking flair:

Mark [was] oblivious to the fact that each contact was an invention.

Rather than chatting to a group of friends, he was actually in conversation with a single internet "buddy", John. The latter achieved the remarkable feat of switching seamlessly from character to character, adopting each one's literary foibles and relating the events of a fictitious life.

The multiple discources seem to be drawn from urban legend, spy thrillers, and internet culture.

Police assembled their account from files obtained from the would-be murderee's computer, an act of intense textual analysis and recreation.

May 26, 2004

A new Website offers another way of letting the collaborative Web speak words to us. Related to Daypop's WordBursts, BlogPulse generates KeyPhrases, some of which are complete sentences, while others are fragments. More sense emerges from these than from single words in isolation, of course:

Camera/Iraq is John Schott's latest project, a fine dynamic archive of imagery and reflection on the war in Iraq:

a special project of Carleton College's Cinema & Media Studies Department and Ratchet Up to gather articles, commentary and photographs about public and personal image practices associated with the War in Iraq. The site has begun with a collection of key news reports and issues, but aspires to include editorial and academic writing that puts the use of photographic images into a broader critical context. Camera/Iraq welcomes links, articles, commentary or images from visitors... The site is intended to be a clearinghouse for thoughtful discussion rather than a locus of invective.

Some distinct sentences on the verge of emergence: "bloated ewan mcgregor splits googol."

No openly pornographic words, yet, although these serve well for literate erotica filler (which we leave as an exercise for the reader). Perhaps, like Metaspy, Wordbursts will offer filtered/nonfiltered choices,

Chanpon is carrying a great review of the splendid-looking new Japanese film Casshern. Japanese scholar Debbie Shamoon explains the movie's background and plot, while paying tribute to its gorgeous imagery:
Not having seen it yet (when will a US distributor step forward?), I'm nevertheless fascinated by the seeming mix of cyberpunk and WWII tropes, the Frankenstein riff, along with an alternate history theme.

May 19, 2004

Be sure to note, or incorporate into the story, the name of the cafe and place where your story is set. By entering the contest, you give Caffeine Society the right to publish your story in an anthology and are eligible to win the $250 prize to be paid on publication.